On Liberal carbon tax hikes and Conservative excise tax cuts

A two cent cut in the excise tax on diesel fuel is worth $ 9.2 million per year to Canada’s transit systems – less than one quarter of one percent of their $ 4.8 billion in annual operating costs (Source: Canadian Urban Transit Association, 2007).

The proposed cut will cost the federal treasury $600 million per year. Less than two percent of those dollars, or one dollar in 60, will directly benefit transit systems.

A Strategic Counsel survey released last week showed that 8 in 10 Canadians think the federal government should dedicate more of its fuel tax revenues to repairing and building public transit systems. This announcement does not touch on investment needs.

Six in 10 Canadians say they would be more likely to take public transit if service was improved. The excise tax cut will do nothing to get more buses on the road or improve existing commuter rail service.

One in five Canadians are ready to switch to public transit because of the high price of filling up their cars. But most urban transit systems are at or beyond capacity at peak hours. New federal funding – not marginal tax cuts – are needed to help Canadians make the switch from cars to transit.

The priority for transit systems are for new investments, not cuts to the fuel tax.

For more information, contact: Maurice Gingues, FCM – (613) 907-6395

The mayor of Ottawa sent the following email out to all of the major city mayors across Canada:

Michael [Director, Policy and Research, FCM],

While the announcement today is small compared to the transit funding needs of many of the municipalities including Ottawa I would suggest that saying it does nothing for transit riders is disingenuous to say the least.

In 2007 The City of Ottawa’s Transit Fleet used 36,645,555 Litres of Diesel Fuel for a cost of $33,175,210.

Under the proposal announced today this would translate into a savings of 732,911.10 for our city’s Transit operations.

By comparison under the Liberal’s Green Shift Plan, diesel fuel would be taxed by an additional 7% in the 4th year of implementation.

So by the 4th year of the Liberal’s Plan, based upon our 2007 average price of 90.53 cents per liter, the financial burden on the City of Ottawa’s transit fleet alone would be $2,322,264.70.

Using today’s price of $1.279/L the impact would be $3,280,876.54.

Larry O’Brien
Mayor City of Ottawa

The excise tax cut announced today by Stephen Harper was targeted towards farmers and truckers. However, as a side benefit, it helps municipalities which use diesel fuel for their buses and other forms of mass transit. The FCM complains that more could be done for transit costs by the federal government, however, today they were handed an unexpected bonus.

We all know that the big city mayors are NDP; so we don't listen. Unfortunately the gullible listen. An entire one minute ad directed to MTV (Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver) ought to focus on this one statement by the mayors. we need more fact based reprisals and this one could be done and could be understood by the “great unwashed”.

Joan Tintor

Ah, the FCM, festering cesspool of Conservative haters and busybodies who want to run daycares, apartments and services to drug addicts, but not fix roads or fight crime.

Well what do we have here? The FCM involving themselves in partisan politics? They should fire their President for displaying such partisanship… oh, wait, I forgot, since they’re supporting the Liberals, it’s okay, because it’s only when their President supports the Conservatives that it becomes a problem.

One has to wonder how “non-partisan” they really are, since they’ve never come clean with their reasons for ousting a President who revealed she was a Conservative… and was tossed shortly after meeting with Dion, no less.

gimbol

I also noted that all other parites seem to think of this money as government revenue, not taxpayers money.

LIberal plan – Give us our money and we might gie some back later (less interest) through non-refundable green tax credits.

Conservative plan -Keep your money, we trust the taxpayer knows how to use it, after all they earned it.

Gabby In QC

Voters should be shown, in a clear concise pictorial or other form, a comparison between the Conservatives' diesel fuel tax cuts and the Liberals' diesel fuel tax increase.

Mike Duffy yesterday showed some figures from the truckers association (official name ?) that should be widely distributed.

http://vollman.blogspot.com Robert V

That's why socialism and environmentalism are incompatible. The attempt to lower emissions (with a carbon tax) is going to hit the working class the hardest (in higher cost of public transit).

Don't tax carbon. Tax wasteful carbon. Big difference. Someone taking the bus to work is not wasting carbon – they should be exempt from the carbon tax. Someone driving an RV on a cross-Canada vacation: fine. Someone driving an SUV by themselves to and from work every day: fine. But someone heating their homes to 19 or 20 degrees in the winter? Someone buying fruit and bread that was trucked in to the grocery store? Why does Dion want to tax them?

http://jamesbowie.blogspot.com James Bowie

Are you really pinning your hopes on Larry O'Brian?

http://www.stephentaylor.ca stephentaylor

Just the numbers

Brett

As I said on AGWN, the majority of people don't use diesel as the fuel for their vehicle, so this won't affect them directly. However, the majority of people that do use diesel (truckers, farmers, muncipialities etc )don't have any other choice as there is no viable alternative, now nor on the horizon that can produce the require horsepower to replace diesel. Therefore, this will benefit those groups of people.

To say that this would undermine efforts to reduce emmisions is disingenuous at best. Given that there is no viable alternative, there will be no reduction in emmisions under Dion's plan, just increased costs that will affect everything including the price og gas (because of transport costs) throughout the entire supply chain..

Brett

As I said on AGWN, the majority of people don't use diesel as the fuel for their vehicle, so this won't affect them directly. However, the majority of people that do use diesel (truckers, farmers, muncipialities etc )don't have any other choice as there is no viable alternative, now nor on the horizon that can produce the require horsepower to replace diesel. Therefore, this will benefit those groups of people.

To say that this would undermine efforts to reduce emmisions is disingenuous at best. Given that there is no viable alternative, there will be no reduction in emmisions under Dion's plan, just increased costs that will affect everything including the price og gas (because of transport costs) throughout the entire supply chain..